Sorry Bill, but your definition of Ponzi is flawed, because the "third party" is the generation of Americans that pays in but does not get a benefit.  And that generation has already been born.

You laugh, but it is my children and your grandchildren that are being victimized by this foolish scheme.

In contrast, SOCIAL SECURITY HAS no way to balance the books because the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT has no intention of covering TAXPAYER losses, and every intent of convincing them that they WILL MAKE A FUTURE profit while they are contemporaneously losing their ASSETS and PRODUCTIVITY SO POLITICIANS CAN BUY THEIR VOTES WITH THEIR OWN MONEY.

The federal government is George Washington, Martin Luther King, Bob Hope, your grandparents, you, me, our children, our grandchildren and all who follow while there is a U.S.  It is not a "stand alone" person or third party that we must fight or that we must obey.

The federal government cannot do anything that we don't let it because it and we are one and the same.  That is indisputable...it's empirical.

Social Security's problem stems from no longer requiring that contributions be set aside in escrow and if loaned, loaned at a current and competitive rate, etc.  Instead it found itself in the general fund with government paying less for borrowing it than the rate(s) it paid arm's length lenders.  That, too, is empirical.

We have the same problem in Texas.  Voters were told that if they voted for the lottery, the money would go to our public schools.  Well the inference was that it would be IN ADDITION to what was already being budgeted.  But that's NOT what happened.  The net income went into the general fund and that's where school expenses are paid from.  So that part was true.  Where the deception came into play was that the legislature budgeted that money as income to school fund, and never increased the amount that would be paid the schools over what had been budgeted to them before.

There is only one way to solve this stuff, and that's with the vote.

But as hard as you wish and want it not to be, the government will continue to support old people because 1) young people won't hire them to work and 2) don't want to support them themselves, 3) most certainly don't want them moving in with them, and that's because most of the old people will not have enough savings to support themselves.

But of course, we can always put grandma and grandpa on a block of ice and push them out to sea.  That practice would last only until you were grandma and grandpa.